Breaking the link between poverty and low student achievement: An evaluation of Title I

This study provides an evaluation of the impact of Title I funding of compensatory education programs on school finance and student performance in New York City public schools during the 1993, 1997 and 2001 school years. Estimates based on a regression-discontinuity approach indicate that the program was unsuccessful in improving student outcomes in high-poverty schools in New York City during this period, and may in fact have had adverse effects during the earlier years in our sample. Less evidence of a negative effect is found for the 2001 school year. These findings are related to the way in which the federal funds were spent.     

Economics of life cycle assessment: Inefficiency of the present approach

From an economic perspective, tools of environmental management must be eco‒efficient, i.e. they have to be economically efficient and they must lead to ecologically sound decisions. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is regarded as one of the most important environmental management tools today. It attempts to record and assess all the environmental impacts of the whole life cycle of a product. The potential benefits of LCA have been discussed extensively. However, the costs and the effects actually achieved have been vastly neglected. Economic analysis shows that the present approach of LCA is economically inefficient compared with site‒specific environmental management, and that it is likely to result in ecologically wrong decisions. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Health status indexes: The trade-off between quantity and quality of life

In the last decade many attempts have been made to combine mortality and morbidity statistics in a single, overall health index. In this paper all of these indexes are shown to involve the same general trade-off between quantity and quality of life. All of them allow increases in the quantity of life to offset decreases in average health status. A formally identical trade-off between population size and average happiness has long been debased in utilitarian ethics, with a marked tendency among modern philosophers to decide in favor of average happiness, that is, precisely contrary to recent health-index researchers. Other considerations also suggest that the trade-off implicit in recent health status indexes may not have general support. The paper concludes with a discussion of various ways of proceeding from this point.     

Integrating sustainable development in the supply chain: The case of life cycle assessment in oil and gas and agricultural biotechnology

It is widely accepted that firms play an important stewardship role in addressing sustainable development concerns. A key challenge in this role is to balance the often conflicting pressures created by sustainable development—firm-level economic performance versus environmental degradation and social disruption. Drawing on complexity theory, risk management, stakeholder theory and the innovation dynamics literature, we discuss the problems of integrating sustainable development concerns in the supply chain, specifically the applicability of life cycle assessment (LCA). Many authors have emphasized the importance of the “cradle to grave” approach of LCA in optimizing closed-loop supply chains, improving product design and stewardship. Based on two case studies (an agricultural biotechnology and an oil and gas company) with supporting data collected from key stakeholders, we argue that sustainable development pressures have increased complexities and presented ambiguous challenges that many current environmental management techniques cannot adequately address. We provide a framework that addresses these deficiencies and discuss implications for practitioners and management theory.     

浅析内部控制和审计的关系

内部控制作为现代管理制度的重要组成部分,是现代企业管理的重要手段,是衡量现代企业管理的重要标志。同时,内部控制也是注册会计师用以确定审计程序的重要依据,对内部控制的重视与信赖,加速了现代审计方法的变革,缩小了审计范围,节约了审计时间和审计费用,完善了审计的职能。因此,内部控制的健全与否,决定着企业的经营目标是否实现,决定着经营风险的大小。与此同时,强化企业的内部控制的制度和程序,可以保证企业资产的安全与完整,防止错误与舞弊的发生,减少财务报表层次以及各交易、账户余额和列报认定层次的重大错报风险,提高审计的重要性水平。所以,我们有必要对内部控制和审计作深入的了解。     

Reading cases of local quality of life assessment as incomplete and socio-politically contentious practices

Quality & Quantity - Quality of life represents one of the most relevant and controversial issues in the contemporary socio-economic and political scene. This paper examines local quality of...     

Labor supply over the life cycle: the long-term forecasting problem

Problems concerning the development of long-term forecasts of age variations in the labor supply are discussed. The author examines problems related to using the life cycle theory of labor supply to analyze such variations. An alternative theory, which suggests that the labor supply of younger and older groups is influenced by subsidies from prime-aged groups, is proposed and tested using U.S. data for the last 60 years.     

Productive behavior through the life course: An essay on the quality of life

Present patterns of productive activity are neither well recognized, optimal for society, nor in accordance with individual prefence. Although a great deal of attention has been given to meeting people's needs for income, medical care, and other services, the quality of their lives must also be defined by what they do for themselves and for others. In discovering present patterns of productive activity throughout the life course and optimizing those patterns, we will raise the quality of American life. To accomplish this task, two great changes are needed: we must recognize the full range of productive activities throughout the life course and give people the opportunity to modify the allocation of paid employment.     

How to invest over the life cycle: Insights from theory

We analyse the state of the art in the field of life cycle portfolio choice, a recent strand of the literature on intertemporal portfolio selection. Life cycle models are designed to identify optimal savings and portfolio policies over the lifetime of investors. They can help to improve pension schemes by showing how these could be specifically tailored to the individual employee’s circumstances to overcome the ‘one-size-fits-all’ philosophy still prevailing in parts of the mandatory retirement savings system. To facilitate comparison, we first describe set-up, solution method and characteristic results for a basic model and then derive a general framework to classify existing contributions. We highlight the models’ strengths and weaknesses and assess their ability to resolve existing portfolio puzzles. Lessons from the literature are summarized and promising areas for further research identified. JEL classifications G11, D14, D91, H55     

Income and wealth inequality and the life cycle. A non-parametric analysis for China

This paper uses the techniques of non-parametric density and regression estimation to estimate the Chinese age/income and age/wealth distributions, using survey data relating to 1987. Although there is evidence of a clear life-cycle profile of income earning and wealth accumulation, the results suggest that only a small part of observed inequality can be explained by life-cycle factors. This finding contradicts the results of some other researchers.     

The link between the Shapley value and the beta factor

In this article, we provide a link between the Shapley value in cooperative game theory and the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) in finance. In particular, the Shapley value of a suitably defined cooperative game is closely related to the beta factor in the CAPM. The beta factor for any given security may be interpreted as the asset’s fairly allocated share of the market risk or as the asset’s average marginal contribution to the market risk, respectively. Other fairness properties and axioms of the Shapley value may be reinterpreted in this context to attain a deeper understanding of the beta factor and the connotation of systematic risk. Our game theoretic approach further allows for a generalisation of the CAPM with respect to arbitrary risk measures other than variance. Last but not least, we discuss the volatility of an asset’s theoretical fair assessment of risk and of its systematic risk, respectively. This result lends itself to face the challenge of an empirical investigation on real stock markets.     

Extending the link between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and intention: a moderated mediation model

This study extended the research on the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and intention by developing a moderated mediation model. This model posits that the link between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and intention is mediated by attitudes toward entrepreneurship and planned entrepreneurial control, and that these mediation processes are further moderated by subjective norms. Based on a sample of 308 valid responses, regression analysis yielded two noteworthy results. First, entrepreneurial self-efficacy positively affects intention through attitudes toward entrepreneurship and planned entrepreneurial control. Second, the direct effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy on intention decreases as subjective norms increase. By contrast, the indirect intention effects of entrepreneurial self-efficacy through attitudes toward entrepreneurship and planned entrepreneurial control increase as subjective norms increase. In addition, the results indicated that subjective norms positively affect entrepreneurial intention. These findings indicated that the model advances the use of the theory of planned behavior and can be used to define a person as an entrepreneur.     

The advertising-to-sales ratio along the brand life cycle: A critical review

The purpose of this study is to suggest a general decision framework for determining the advertising to sales (A/S) ratio during different stages of the brand life cycle, based on past empirical evidence, as reported in the marketing literature.     

Retailer-manufacturer price and profit relationships along the advertising life cycle: An empirical examination

Competitive intra-channel forces are an important factor to the success (or failure) of newly introduced brands. The present study offers an extended theoretical framework of the advertising life-cycle concept, which illuminates the changes in the manufacturer-retailer balance of power within the marketing channel along the development path of new brands. The theoretical conclusions are then tested against a unique data set. The empirical findings confirm the prediction that dynamic competitive elements will change the intra-channel pricing balance.     

Making the link between work-life balance practices and organizational performance

The business case for work-life balance practices, as espoused by many organizations, rests on attracting better applicants and reducing work-life conflict among existing employees in order to enhance organizational performance. This review of the literature provides some evidence for the claim regarding recruitment, but there is insufficient evidence to support the notion that work-life practices enhance performance by means of reduced work-life conflict. We suggest that the business case may therefore need to be modified to reflect the number of additional routes by which work-life balance practices can influence organizational performance, including enhanced social exchange processes, increased cost savings, improved productivity, and reduced turnover. The impact of these processes may, however, be moderated by a number of factors, including national context, job level, and managerial support. The importance of further research into the effects of these practices is discussed.     

Life cycle assessment in the food supply chain: a case study

This research aims at assessing the environmental impact of the poultry supply chain from cradle to grave using case study research and also life cycle assessment (LCA). While a limited number of generic poultry production LCA studies have been published, fewer yet assess the whole process of a specific organisation, none comparing the increased impact of further processing. Our results show that irrespectively of the impact assessment method utilised, the process of producing portions is considerably higher in total environmental impact due to the extra raw material required to produce the same mass into retail. Our research contributes to the growing number of LCA studies and could be used by practitioners for comparison against national and international averages. From a theoretical point of view, this research provides new insights into the relationship between vertically integrated supply chains and environmental performance which has not been examined in the past.